I just updated the site with a new little feature. All published articles now have a “Post to Twitter” button at the top right hand corner of the article. If you click it, it will redirect you to a page where you can Tweet about the article.
If you don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging site. Think of it like a status updater on steroids. It is hard to explain. The best way to figure out what it is would be to just sign up and use it for awhile. You will get addicted to it I promise.
Tweeting about your articles and about other articles that you enjoy on the Informative Post will give more exposure to us. The more exposure and traffic for us, the better it is for the whole Informative Post community.
If you haven’t been following my Tweets on Twitter yet, you should be! I tweet updates about all my sites over my Twitter account much more quickly than blogging about them.
December 9th, 2008 on 12:24 am
Hi Douglas,
Thanks for the scoop on Twitter. I haven’t used it yet, but I clicked your link, and it looks very cool. BTW, I noticed you have Ft. Wayne as your locale. I’m in Ft. Wayne too! Small world huh?? Thanks for the update! I am still new to Informative Post, and I love the site!
December 9th, 2008 on 8:55 am
Wow, it is a small world! I went to school at Tri-State in Angola. I just recently moved to Toledo though. I still head over to Ft Wayne though quite a bit to visit friends.
The “Post to Twitter” button should help attract visitors to your articles via Twitter now and since Twitter has been getting a lot of press, I thought I should add this functionality to the site.
December 17th, 2008 on 5:02 pm
Douglas,
While the post to twitter button is a good idea that adds convenience to the user, you should be careful about how often you’re twittering your own site updates because it could border on twitter spam which would case the kind of exposure you don’t want. Perhaps there should be “twit at this time” or “twit in X minutes” option to avoid the problem?
Your twitter timeline almost makes you look like a self-promoting spammer. A few hours ago, you had a flurry of tinyurl twits that I’m guessing were site update twits. If I hadn’t talked to you over twitter before seeing those, I would’ve thought your twitter feed was like @techcrunch or @lifehacker where twitter seems to be just another RSS feed outlet. I stopped following them because I already subscribe to the feed and have no love for redundancy.
It seems that whenever someone uses the promotional power of twitter, they have to maintain a proper insight/lifestream to promotion ratio so that they don’t lose followers.
Other than that rant, neat button!
December 17th, 2008 on 5:10 pm
Hey Chance, thanks for your input as always. The post to Twitter button is for my other site, InformativePost.com. It’s a news site. The “Post to Twitter” button is for that site. I do not post to Twitter, new articles on that site, but this button allows the author of that article the ability.
I do post my new blog updates from BrownPHP to Twitter, but I don’t see how I could be spamming being that I rarely publish more that 2 articles a week on this site.
I post news articles from some of my favorite Tech and PHP sites that I find interesting, but they are never from my site.
I agree that it isn’t a good idea to spam twitter at all, as that could have harmful affects. I don’t think spamming anything is every a good idea.
But please do let me know if you ever feel like I’m spamming on Twitter. I’d have to admit that I am a bit addicted…
December 17th, 2008 on 6:02 pm
Douglas,
Oh, ok, that makes sense. I use Tumblr (http://tumblr.com) to post those sorts of links b/c I think it keeps my twitter noise low. Of course, the downside is that while a lot more ppl I know have some knowledge of twitter, they haven’t heard of Tumblr. which makes my followers low but it’s a great alternative to delicious since it isn’t just bookmarking because you can embed materials and style it like a blog.
If you decide not to tumbl along, maybe you could add some sort of endorsement to your article linking. @timoreilly does things that way and I think it’s a good method. I tend to look at most twits I follow at a glance and when I see “{Article Title} {link shortener link}”, I just automatically go, “oh, self promotion spam on their blog”. That’s why I thought those links were spam-like.
If you decide to tumbl along, you can follow my tumblr at http://chance.garciawebapps.com
Now that I know what those links were about, I don’t think you’re spamming to Twitter at all, you’re just as addicted to interest sharing via twitter as I am to interest sharing via tumblr. =)